Manchester United dressing was run by five players under Sir Alex Ferguson, reveals Wayne Rooney

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Date: October 19, 2018

Wayne Rooney has revealed how Sir Alex Ferguson managed to stop new signings from unsettling the dressing room at Manchester United.

There have been worries about Jose Mourinho’s ability to control the Man United dressing room. Star midfielder Paul Pogba has made a number of thinly-veiled inflammatory comments about Mourinho and the club.

Others, meanwhile, have come in and failed to settle properly like Alexis Sanchez, who came from Arsenal in January on a free transfer.

Rooney has explained that there was a core of key players at United who controlled the dressing room and stopped any players from messing it up.

“That would never be allowed to happen [players bigger than the team],” Rooney told Men In Blazers.

“The likes of Giggs, Neville, Scholes, Ferdinand, myself – players who had United in them and wanted the best for that club – would never allow anyone to mess that up.

“We controlled the dressing room ourselves. Alex Ferguson didn’t really need to control that. The players had the trust of the manager to do that themselves.”

There’s no one like that at United anymore. Rooney was a leader and so were Neville and Ferdinand, in particular, as well as Giggs and Scholes. All in their own individual way, they could lead.

Even United’s captaincy options at the moment, such as Pogba, Antonio Valencia and Chris Smalling, are far from leaders. It leaves the dressing room lurching from one place to another and is one of the key problems at United.